Rogersville
Huntsville, Walker County, Texas
Marker Inscription
NOTED FOR BEING HUNTSVILLE’S OLDEST AFRICAN-AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOOD, ROGERSVILLE IS ROUGHLY SITUATED BETWEEN 7TH AND 10TH STREETS AND OLD MADISONVILLE ROAD AND AVENUE N. MICAJAH C. ROGERS, HUNTSVILLE’S FIRST MAYOR, ORIGINALLY OWNED MOST OF THE LAND AND BEGAN SELLING IT AFTER THE CIVIL WAR. ALTHOUGH IT IS NOT CERTAIN WHETHER ROGERSVILLE WAS MEANT TO BE AN AFRICAN-AMERICAN NEIGHBORHOOD, ROGERS SOLD AT LEAST SIX TRACTS OF LAND TO FORMER SLAVES IN 1866 ALONG WHAT IS TODAY 10TH STREET. AMONG THE NEW LANDOWNERS WAS JOSHUA HOUSTON, SAM HOUSTON’S FORMER BODY SERVANT. BY BUYING PROPERTY, BUILDING HOMES, AND ESTABLISHING BUSINESSES, INCLUDING A WAGON YARD, BLACKSMITH, CARPENTRY SHOP, BARBER AND BEAUTY SHOPS, CAFES AND OTHER STORES, RESIDENTS CONFIRMED THEIR NEW INDEPENDENCE WHILE HOLDING A STAKE IN THE COMMUNITY. CHURCHES WERE CENTRAL TO ROGERSVILLE, REFLECTING THE FREEDOMS TO WORSHIP AND TO GATHER PREVIOUSLY DENIED TO AFRICAN-AMERICANS. IN PARTICULAR, FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, ESTABLISHED BY “MOTHER” SARAH ROLLING AND REV. J.J. RHINEHARDT, STRENGTHENED COMMUNITY IDENTITY. NEIGHBORHOOD CHURCHES ALSO OFTEN SERVED AS SCHOOLS, WHERE STUDENTS AND FAMILIES LEARNED TO READ AND WRITE AND CONTINUED TO GAIN EDUCATION. IN 1890, AFTER FACING SOME CHALLENGES, JOSHUA HOUSTON AND OTHERS PREVAILED IN CONSTRUCTING A NEIGHBORHOOD SCHOOL. HIS SON, NOTED EDUCATOR SAMUEL WALKER HOUSTON, GREW UP HERE AND ESTABLISHED THE SAM HOUSTON INDUSTRIAL TRAINING SCHOOL AT GALILEE. ROGERSVILLE BECAME THE SITE FOR THE ANNUAL JUNETEENTH CELEBRATION, THE MAJOR SOCIAL EVENT FOR HUNTSVILLE’S AFRICAN-AMERICAN COMMUNITY. OVERALL, ROGERSVILLE’S ESTABLISHMENTS HAVE EXTENDED ECONOMIC, EDUCATIONAL, AND CULTURAL OPPORTUNITIES TO ALL WALKER COUNTY CITIZENS.
Erected by Texas Historical Commission
The Story
Rogersville is Huntsville's oldest African-American neighborhood, born when former mayor Micajah Rogers began selling tracts to freed people in 1866 — among the buyers, Sam Houston's former body servant Joshua Houston. Freedpeople here built homes, churches, and businesses from blacksmith shops to cafes, and turned their churches into schools when public ones were denied. It became the heart of Huntsville's Black community and the home of its annual Juneteenth celebration.
Why it matters
Rogersville shows how emancipated Texans built independence and community through landownership, worship, and education in the face of Jim Crow.
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Related people
- · Micajah C. Rogers
- · Joshua Houston
- · Samuel Walker Houston
- · Sarah Rolling
- · J.J. Rhinehardt
Related events
- · Juneteenth
Themes & tags
Nearby & related markers
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An Alabama native who came to Texas in 1831, George Washington Grant built a sprawling enterprise of stagecoaches, sawmills, and nearly 10,000 acres around Huntsville, and helped found Sam Houston Normal Institute and served as sheriff and county judge during Reconstruction. Though he had held people in slavery before the war, after Emancipation he sold and donated land to freedmen and, with the Quakers and the Freedmen's Bureau, created the community he called Harmony Settlement—better known as Grant's Colony—complete with farmhouses, a cotton gin, and a school open to children of any race.
Sam Houston Industrial and Training School
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Born in Huntsville in 1864 to enslaved parents, Samuel W. Houston earned degrees from Hampton, Atlanta University, and Howard before returning home to build schools for African American children in an era when the state funneled only Black-paid taxes toward their education. Around 1906 he opened classes in the rented Galilee Methodist Church, and the Sam Houston Industrial and Training School grew to serve hundreds of students statewide with vocational and academic programs. Merged into the Huntsville school system by 1930, it became Sam Houston High School and endured until integration in 1968.
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